Patent Attorneys: AI Visibility Market Discovery Index

Benchmark Summary

Questions This Section Answers

• Who led the Patent Attorneys benchmark in October 2026, and by how wide a margin?
• How much did Wolf Greenfield's recommendation coverage move compared with July 2026?
• Which brands recorded a significant decline this month?

Fish & Richardson led the Patent Attorneys benchmark in October 2026 with valid recommendation coverage of 61.4%, up from 58.5% in July 2026. The gap to the next closest brand, Wolf Greenfield at 35.7%, was 25.7 percentage points. Wolf Greenfield posted the largest increase, rising 18.7 points from 17.0% in July 2026 to 35.7% in October 2026, a move beyond normal month-to-month variation and also a significant move from September 2026. No brand recorded a significant decline this month.

Movement this month was concentrated: Wolf Greenfield was the only brand whose change exceeded normal month-to-month variation, while the remaining nine tracked brands were stable across the July-to-October series. Wolf Greenfield also moved into the widest-gap position in the category, passing Finnegan and Knobbe Martens, both of which declined 12.5 and 10.9 points respectively since July 2026, though neither move was beyond normal variation on its own.

The benchmark began with 570 prompt-surface observations in October 2026 and produced 70 qualified observations after qualification.

Current Benchmark at a Glance

Qualified surface breadth counts the canonical AI/search surface families with at least one qualified observation: ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. In October 2026, all six families were represented, compared with five families in July 2026.

For the strategic interpretation of this benchmark, read CiteWorks Studio's analysis of How AI Search Is Recommending Patent Attorneys

Research Scope and Qualification

Questions This Section Answers

• How many of the collected prompt-surface observations qualified for the public benchmark?
• Why is the benchmark denominator narrower than the raw collection universe?

The public benchmark is narrower than the raw collection universe by design. The table below shows how observations were qualified in each period.

Brand-level percentages use the qualified observations as the public denominator, not the raw collection. See the AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology.

Current Brand Standings

Questions This Section Answers

• How did Fish & Richardson and Wolf Greenfield differ in valid recommendation coverage and rank-one rate in October 2026?
• Which tracked brands failed to register any recommendation coverage this month?

This table is the primary current-month benchmark view.

How to Read the Standings

• Presence rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is mentioned at all.
• Valid recommendation coverage: share of qualified observations with at least one valid recommendation, the primary metric.
• Top-three rate: share of qualified observations where the brand appears among the top three recommendations.
• Rank-one rate: share of qualified observations where the brand is the number one recommendation.
• Net sentiment: positive minus negative mentions divided by total mentions, scored from 0 to 1.

For formulas and denominator rules, see AI Visibility Market Discovery Metric Definitions.

Recommendation Coverage Movement

Questions This Section Answers

• Which brand's coverage change exceeded normal month-to-month variation, and what moved it past Finnegan and Knobbe Martens?
• How did Fish & Richardson defend its category lead between July and October 2026?

Largest Increase: Wolf Greenfield

Wolf Greenfield was the only brand to record a move beyond normal month-to-month variation. Its valid recommendation coverage rose 18.7 points from 17.0% in July 2026 to 35.7% in October 2026, an increase that also exceeded normal variation from September 2026. The brand's top-three rate rose 26.5 points from 6.4% in July 2026 to 32.9% in October 2026, and its rank-one rate rose 21.8 points from 1.1% to 22.9% over the same period. Its presence rate rose 16.3 points from 22.3% in July 2026 to 38.6% in October 2026. The move in October 2026 carried Wolf Greenfield past Finnegan and Knobbe Martens to second place in the category.

Category Leader: Fish & Richardson

Fish & Richardson remained the category leader in October 2026, with valid recommendation coverage of 61.4%, up from 58.5% in July 2026. Its coverage rose 18.0 points from 43.4% in September 2026, a move beyond normal month-to-month variation. Its top-three rate of 54.3% and rank-one rate of 21.4% both led the category in October 2026. Finnegan, Knobbe Martens, and Kilpatrick Townsend also moved upward from September 2026, though none by more than normal variation.

The Finnegan-to-Wolf Greenfield gap narrowed by 31.2 points across the four months, and the Knobbe Martens-to-Wolf Greenfield gap narrowed by 29.6 points over the same period.

Recommendation Placement Snapshot

Questions This Section Answers

• Why did Wolf Greenfield's first-position rate nearly match Fish & Richardson's despite much lower coverage?
• How did Fish & Richardson's rank-one rate change between July and October 2026?

Coverage alone does not show how prominently a brand is recommended. Fish & Richardson held the highest top-three rate at 54.3% in October 2026, while Wolf Greenfield converted a larger share of its coverage into first-position recommendations, with a rank-one rate of 22.9% against coverage of 35.7%.

Similar total coverage can still hide different first-position rates: Fish & Richardson and Wolf Greenfield had nearly the same rank-one rate in October 2026, but Fish & Richardson reached it from a coverage base nearly 26 points larger.

Buyer-Intent Distribution

Questions This Section Answers

• Which buyer-intent classes produced qualified observations in the current benchmark series?
• Why do Pricing & Value and Multi-Brand Comparison remain empty in both periods?

All qualified observations in both July and October 2026 fell into the Brand Recommendation class.

The current public series measures that class of discovery and does not yet contain qualified observations in the empty classes.

Historical Measurement Record

Questions This Section Answers

• How has the recommendation coverage leader changed across the July-to-October 2026 measurements?
• Which brand recorded the largest coverage movement in each measurement period?

This is an evergreen benchmark URL. New measurements are added to the same report.

Evidence and Source Layer

The benchmark is built from prompt-level observations that retain the query, AI/search surface, answer, brand outcome, recommendation placement, sentiment, and, where exposed, citations or attributable evidence sources. Source presence is evidence about the information environment. It is not automatically proof that the source caused the recommendation.

Scope Boundaries

This public benchmark does not measure market share, attributable sales, every possible AI response, organic-search ranking, social mention volume, private or sponsored channels, or causality from a metric movement alone. It records what AI and search surfaces recommend when asked about patent attorney firms, based on the qualified observation set described above.

Top 10 Cited Domains

Questions This Section Answers

• Which domains drew the most citations across AI platform responses in October 2026?
• How concentrated are the citations among the top 10 domains compared with the remaining domains?
• Which tracked brands' own domains appeared among the most-cited sources?

Across all AI platform responses in October 2026, the benchmark observed 3,511 citations drawn from 1,230 unique domains.

Citations are broadly distributed rather than concentrated: the top 10 domains account for a combined share well under a quarter of all citations, and the remaining 1,220 domains carry the large majority. Two tracked brands' own domains appear in the top 10, fr.com at rank 8 and wolfgreenfield.com at rank 10. General reference and social platforms dominate the top ranks, while the legal-sector sources that appear are professional directories and brand sites rather than news outlets or government pages.

About This Benchmark

The LLM Authority Index AI Visibility Market Discovery Index tracks how AI and search surfaces present brands across canonical surface families, measuring presence, recommendation coverage, placement, and sentiment for tracked companies in each vertical.

• AI Visibility Market Discovery Methodology
• AI Visibility Market Discovery Metric Definitions
• AI Visibility Market Discovery Research Standards
• Modeled AI Visibility Authority Value

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